Plans, projects and How-to's for Home Machinists and Other Makers
I took a couple of machine shop classes and got spoiled by the X-axis power feeds on the Bridgeport mills. Ever since then I have thought about adding one to my Harbor Freight Mini-Mill (Sieg X2).
Beside reducing wear and tear on your arm and the boredom of turning and turning and turning a wheel, a power feed can produce a better finish on your parts because it moves the table at a more uniform speed than you probably can. … Read the rest
Jeff Duntemann’s workshop is set up for working on electronics, but he has some good suggestions and ideas that would be useful for a home machine shop.
The typical Sieg X2 mini-mill [HF 44991, Grizzly G8689, Micro-Mark & others] has a lot of backlash in the Z-axis. In my case it was .053-inches, which was almost a full turn of the fine-adjust knob.
I heard that putting a shim behind the rack on the column would help by causing it to mesh tighter with the pinion gear in the head.… Read the rest
I recently needed to mill down the thickness of a 7-inch long piece of steel from .25-inches to .20-inches. As the metal became thinner I started getting chatter and a bad finish on the ends because they were not being supported enough by my 3.5-inch wide precision screwless vise and 6-inch parallels.… Read the rest